She is a criminal..
She is forbidden to enter Scandinavia and there were some speculations about Shengen countries as well. Why? Because she was working one year (legally) as a volunteer for something she believes in - for peace and tolerance, for drug free lifestyle, for mutual understanding, for youth all over Europe...
Irony is that she was dealing with visas and travels and she did it really great. Found the best connections, called embassies, fixed documents..and now..just because she is not coming from the right country, she can sit at home and wait three months till she can feel free to travel wherever (relatively) she wants again.
This system makes one feel as a criminal of the century sometimes...
Kristina, you actually managed to describe so well what is in my head now and what kind of dissatisfaction and disappointment I feel. Unfair, unreasonable rules, aimed on limiting people, in creating obstacles and unnecessary paper work. I was so stressed last days, making phone calls, checking with several institutions who have right and which rule is lastly valid, if there is a confrontation between different rules and if there is somebody who actually know those rules! The other fact that nobody informed me one year ago that something like that will happen, staff in embassies is easily irritated, unfriendly, trying to kick you out as soon as possible and creating unnecessary conflicts just because you have asked for clarification. The fun part now will be that I will again apply for permission and hopefully I will get to Sweden but after that there will be new 3 months in which I will not be able to travel there! Now it starts for me also another big application procedure with another Scandinavian embassy which will take minimum 2 months (but of course not in my case) and up to 7 months, with no guarantee that a permission will be issued! Yes my country will enter EU in 2007 maybe and than we have to wait until the rules enter in work. Why some people coming from so called ?good?, ?rich?, ?trustful? countries can difficult meet such problems and people coming from other countries be excluded, turned back, forbidden to go out and in the same time millions of people abusing with any kind of rule can move freely around, trafficking drugs, people, committing crimes and they are not disturbed at all. And from the other angle those who are cached why they should be the reason that everybody after them should be stamped with the label ?potentially suspicious??
This is the unfair world that we are trying to make a better place to live?
Good luck to all, I will not give up, hope you too?
No, we won't stop hoping! yes, we are going to stand in queues for a long time, and look at those arogant faces of staff in embassies. we are going to feel emberased every time they look at us suspiciously, and go trough our bags and make us go trough a metal detectors. It's not the paper work that's annoying, it's their believe that we are kind of dirty, uneducated, stupid criminals and all that knowing in our hearts and minds that we have never even gotten a parking ticket.
what makes it even worse is that our friends who happen to live in the same town we live in, and go to school with us, have a different passports, and don't even need to apply for visa. They can freely go where ever they want. Why can't I have their kind of passport? becouse I don't belong to the religion they do!
but anyway, I'll be persistant, will be there in embassies applying for visa every time I need to go to a seminar or a congress or a camp; whenever I have kind, wonderful friends to send guarantee letters for me.
that's ok!
I stopped dreaming of going to a trip over a Europe or a World anyway!
don't stop dreaming please!
Madlena found the right words!
We are trying to make this unfair world better and I promise that you have even the support of people who own a privileged passport. But I know that a passport doesn't tell anything about the person. So, I join in this struggle to make the world a little better!
But please don't stop dreaming!